In addition to sensors and actuators, control units are also contacted with the aid of electrical plug connections. Almost all control units are sensitive to overvoltages or unfavorable contacting sequences since these may damage the electronic components therein. In order to remedy this, in some control units extended ground pins have been introduced in order to achieve early “grounding” during the plug-in process. However, these conventional extended ground pins have, among others, the following disadvantages:                first contacting of the extended ground pins is not reliable over all tolerance positions. It works in many cases but, due to tolerances, not always, since the ground pins are not sufficiently long for this purpose.        much longer pins, which are expensive and difficult to manufacture within the tolerance, are needed on male plugs of the control unit.        the extended ground pins are fixedly defined regarding their position. In another control unit wiring, a novel interface having the extended ground pins is needed and is to be defined at another location.        